I've seen bicycles used, beautifully and imaginatively, in window displays and art installations.
I've also seen some rather extreme attempts to fit bicycles and people to each other.
I don't, however, know what to make of this:
Stealing someone's bike is one of the lowest things one human being can do to another.
All right, I'll confess: I'm not the first person to say as much. Tom Cuthbertson said it in Anybody's Bike Book, warning that bike locks are only but so effective in deterring theft.
Now, one of the lowest things anybody has said, at least in recent history, was uttered by Donald Trump. (Are you surprised?) He claimed that there wasn't really a shortage of masks. Rather, he claimed, they were going "out the back door."
Although I am not a health-care worker, I took umbrage to that remark because some of my current and former students work in hospitals and nursing homes and a neighbor/friend of mine is a nurse in one of this city's major hospitals. It's hard not to wonder when--or whether--I'll see or hear from them again.
Trump accusing them of theft is a bit like Lance Armstrong accusing another rider of "juicing." Or a Kardashian castigating anybody for a lack of restraint.
How much lower can someone go?
It looks like somebody has plumbed such depths. I am talking about the lowlife who took Dan Harvey's bike.
At 2 am GMT, he had just finished his nine-hour shift at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, England. He'd spent the night as he's spent previous nights: treating COVID-19 patients in the hospital's intensive care unit.
 |
| Dan Harvey, medic |
He went to an area of the hospital where a staff ID is required for entry. He expected to unlock his bike and "clear his head" as he pedaled home.
Instead, he had to take a taxi: His bike was gone. And his wasn't the first stolen from that limited-access area.
The ray of light in this darkness came after Harvey shared his loss on social media. Soon, offers to replace his wheels came in.
 |
| Dan Harvey, cyclist |
He's riding to work again. But it doesn't make stealing a bike from someone who rides it to a job where he puts his life on the line for others any less base of an act.
Over the weekend, I took two rides. On Saturday, I pedaled up to Greenwich, Connecticut. Yesterday, I took a spin out to Point Lookout, on the South Shore of Long Island.
What did those rides have in common, besides pleasure? Well, both were seasonably cool (high temperatures around 14-15C or 58-60 F) and sunny. Oh, and there was plenty of wind. Fortunately for me, I pedaled into it much of the way to Connecticut and on my way down to Rockaway Beach, where the wind blew at my side on my way to Point Lookout. That meant, of course, I had the wind at my back most of the way from Connecticut, and for a long flat stretch from Rockaway Beach to Woodside.
It also meant that I saw very little motorized traffic. I think that in 252 kilometers (157 miles) of riding, I probably saw fewer cars and trucks than I see in my 8 kilometer (5 mile) commute on weekday mornings.
That might be why the expanse of water, as happy as I was to see it, wasn't as much of a contrast with the road behind me as it usually is.
